Most Valuable Kids Are Charity MVPs

After spending the better half of my paycheck on a pair of concert tickets last year, I was beyond upset when I came down with the flu just before the show. My tickets went in the garbage, and they were in good company — $50 million worth of sports and entertainment tickets go unused each year. What I didn't know back then was that they could have gone somewhere much more worthwhile — to underprivileged children.

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Most Valuable Kids believes that sporting and entertainment events are too often an experience only middle- and upper-class families can afford, and that children from low-income families often miss out on the opportunity to see their role models in person. To change this, MVK provides disadvantaged kids with tickets to sporting and entertainment events, donated by ticket holders who can't use them.

The process is simple: ticket holders can head to mostvaluablekids.org to register and donate their tickets, which are then made available to youth-based organizations like Big Brothers Big Sisters and the Ronald McDonald House. After an organization claims tickets they can use, the tickets are mailed, couriered, or reissued at the box office from the donor to the recipient organization — and your tickets land in the hands of underprivileged children instead of the garbage.

Since its inception in 2001, MVK has given over 70 thousand tickets to deserving children. Want to help out? Bookmark mostvaluablekids.org and log on next time you have event tickets that you have to part with — like when your well-meaning boyfriend buys you tickets to the Backstreet Boys reunion tour.